‘Fiery meeting’ in Oval Office between economic nationalists and pro-trade moderates.. That has led to discussions over moving Mr Navarro and the new National Trade Council he leads out of the White House and to the Commerce Department.. Mr Navarro’s case has not been helped by his interactions with Republicans in Congress. He was criticised for being ill-prepared and vague at a closed-door briefing he held with Senators last month to discuss Mr Trump’s trade agenda and angered some Republicans as a result... Among Mr Cohn’s recent appointments has been Andrew Quinn, a respected former diplomat and trade official who served as a senior negotiator during the Obama administration’s push for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other countries... The appointment of Mr Quinn drew a howl of protest from Breitbart, the rightwing web site Mr Bannon used to lead. It labelled the career official an “enemy within”.. “The situation is less worrying than it was two months ago because [Mr] Navarro seems to be more and more marginalised,” said one European official. “His influence seems to be diminishing quickly.”.. “At the moment it appears that the Wall Street wing of the Trump administration is winning this battle and the Wall Street wing is in favour of the status quo in terms of US trade policy,” Ms Lee said.
For Commerce Pick Wilbur Ross, ‘Inherently Bad’ Deals Paid Off
And yet, for more than a decade, those same trade deals helped Mr. Ross amass a fortune across the globe — in countries like Mexico and China, among others. In fact, Mr. Ross has sometimes invested overseas in ways that Mr. Trump condemns.
.. As the head of an auto parts company, Mr. Ross shipped jobs to Mexico, taking advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he now says is unfair and must be renegotiated. That company, along with a textile firm he founded, publicly stated that Mexico was central to their growth.
.. “As a private businessman, Mr. Ross made pragmatic decisions based on the rules of the road at the time , and it is precisely his knowledge of how trade deals work that will allow him to be successful in renegotiating bad deals like Nafta,
.. in 2006, Mr. Ross announced plans to open an $80 million state-of-the-art cotton plant in Vietnam that would employ 1,500 workers. It was one of many business decisions Mr. Ross made over the years that seemed to depart from Mr. Trump’s stance against free-trade deals and the migration of jobs overseas.
.. But he began transferring work to Mexico in the early days of his business. When Mr. Ross acquired an auto parts factory in Carlisle, Pa., a decade ago, he took a hard line with the union, demanding cuts in wages and benefits worth between a quarter and 30 percent of workers’ earnings
.. “Wilbur Ross — there’s no way he cares about the worker,” said Stacey Foltz, who worked at the plant for 10 years. “He made billions of dollars taking jobs out of the country.”
Krauthammer’s Take: Bannon ‘Had No Horns’ and Gave ‘Intellectual Heft to Trumpism’ at CPAC
He was very specific about the three major goals: foreign policy, domestic economic policy, and what he called the undoing of the administrative state,
.. it presented a picture that for many conservatives — not all, some have trouble about the trade issue and the protectionism issue — but for many conservatives it was a kind of homecoming.
President Trump’s Mexican Standoff
His approach to Peña Nieto suggests this is one adversary he fails to understand.
.. His strategy has been to soften up the opponent with verbal abuse and extreme threats, including the possibility of tearing up Nafta altogether... “The president-elect has done a wonderful job of preconditioning other countries [with] whom we will be negotiating that change is coming,” Commerce Secretary-designate Wilbur Ross gloated during his Senate confirmation hearing. “The peso didn’t go down 35% by accident. Even the Canadian dollar has gotten somewhat weaker—also not an accident. He has done some of the work that we need to do in order to get better trade deals.”.. Maybe Mr. Trump should have Googled the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexicans are still smarting over that one... The White House responded by saying it would extract the money for the wall with a 20% tariff on Mexican exports to the U.S. Of course American consumers would be the ones paying. But in any case it would be the end of Nafta.Americans have to hope their new president is not that reckless... “sales of food and farm products to Mexico totaled a record $19.5 billion in fiscal year 2014.” That was 13% of U.S. agricultural exports.
.. Mr. Trump says that the U.S. has been outfoxed in manufacturing because American companies now make things in Mexico. But imports from Mexico contain significant American content, and production-sharing across the continent has given U.S. companies an edge in the global market.
.. But it is being debated whether that would repeal the congressional legislation that put it into effect. If so, tariffs would revert to pre-Nafta levels, which implies using the World Trade Organization tariff schedule. American exporters to Mexico would face greater tariff hikes than Mexican exporters to the U.S., because Mexico accepted much greater tariff reductions under Nafta than the U.S. did.
.. Mr. Trump might try to invoke the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 to slap his oft-promised punitive tariff on Mexican imports. But it is hard to argue that national security is being threatened.
.. The 45th president has said he wants to craft new bilateral trade agreements. Mexico says it is not interested. It has learned a hard lesson about relying on an unreliable partner, and its aim now is to diversify its trade portfolio. Policy makers are said to be exploring new agreements in the region with countries eager to replace U.S. agricultural suppliers.